


Compensation

by half_sleeping



Category: Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-02
Updated: 2010-03-02
Packaged: 2017-10-14 08:16:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/half_sleeping/pseuds/half_sleeping
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Conrad and Veser move in together, and suffering commences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Compensation

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even, ever, seriously

  
  
  
  
**Entry tags:**   
|    
[hanna is not a boy's name](http://half-sleeping.livejournal.com/tag/hanna%20is%20not%20a%20boy%27s%20name)   
  
---|---  
  
_**[HINABN] Compensation, pg-13, Conrad/Veser**_  
Title: Compensation  
Series: Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name  
Pairing: Conrad/Veser  
Genre: CRAAAACK.  
Note: I don't even, ever, seriously

  
And so, the dust clears and Hanna rubs the runes off his hand leaving dark marker-ink stains on his shirt and the bodies are cleared and everything’s ended for Veser.

And everything's just begun.

“Well,” Hanna says. Brightens. “So hey you can stay with Ethelred and me at the office, I mean not that we LIVE there live there cause he's totally dead and all but I live there live there, and you're totally welcome to stay and live and that would be awesome, wouldn't it? I think it'd be awesome."

Conrad never quite knows what to _call_ the dead guy, but it's kinda-sorta okay cause they don't really _talk_ , more exchange meaningful looks while Hanna blabbers on or does something stupid-slash-crazy.

They're doing it right now.

"I'm not sure the office is the best place for a growing boy," he says, as flat as always.

"I'm fucking nineteen," Veser says without heat, who still hasn't taken his eyes off the empty yawning house, or his hands out of his pockets.

"Oh!" says Hanna. "Well don't worry, you have lots more to grow and I totally know how you feel, because how stupid are some people- not that Richard's at all stupid, to mistake strapping young men like you and me for chi-"

Veser squints at him. "You're my age? Really?"

Hanna makes a very interesting noise and says, with dignity, "I'm _twenty-four_."

"Really?" Veser says, straightening up. "I'm taller than you, though."

Hanna wavers, twitches and tries to stretch his spine. "I'm _lightly built_ ," he protested. "And furthermore!"

"You can stay with me," says Conrad without quite knowing why he's saying it, except maybe the look on Veser's face when his mother had fled without a word, too intent on the sea to spare sorrow for her son.

"You have a nice place," '...' says.

"It'd be no trouble," says Conrad, though his face is set into the kind of sourness that Scrooge himself might envy. He'd only wanted a _drink_.

Hanna lights up because, hey, problem solved, and Conrad always comes along with them so that's totally going to be settled and anyway he's not really all that certain that growing boys can be introduced to the office on any kind of semi-permanent basis. Other things live there that probably shouldn't. He was gonna get around to cleaning it, soon. Very soon. Soon enough, anyway.

"You certain?" says Veser. "I mean, absol-fucking-lutely?"

Conrad shifts, uncomfortably. "Yeah," he says. "I mean. I guess."

"Oh," says Veser, grins, razor-sharp and wider than even the huge boat lamps he has for eyes. "Cool."

.0.

"I could pay you rent in sexual favours," says Veser suddenly, while they are being _awkward_ and alone together and Conrad is trying to remember why he's doing this, and Conrad's mouth kind of falls right open and he gawks at Veser and he's just. so. _Outraged_.

"I am not _actually_ going to ever ever ever ask for sexual favours in exchange for rent because I am not some kind of deviant _sugar daddy_ ," snarls Conrad, and Veser's grin threatens to split open his face.

Conrad gets so angry he throws some of his couch cushions right at Veser's head, and they shout at each other a bit and scuffle a lot and after that, it's not _much_ awkward any more.

At least until the next fight, but Conrad soon learns that with Veser, awkward can go right out the window and cry on the way down.

.0.

Conrad buys a humidifier, and Veser starts wandering around with his shirt off.

The two are perhaps related.

"Look I just fucking like moisture it's my damn BIOLOGY OKAY SHUT UP," yells Veser at Conrad when he wakes to find Veser lying on the floor with it turned up to full power, spraying a constant stream of mist onto his bare, pale chest, and looking happier than he usually allows himself to show.

"I didn't say anything," points out the vampire, and thinks nothing further of it except to remind Veser to mop up the water when he's done.

Except he doesn't, thinking of the long clean lines of Veser's torso with the beads of water sitting on his scars as smoothly as his skin, so pale pale as fish at the bottom of the ocean, who never see the sun.

The next time Veser's flat on his front snoring away as the thing whirrs and gently emits its cooling vapour over the boy, long and lanky with his shoulder blades rising out of his skin a bit like dorsal fins. It's a really fucking uncomfortable way to sleep, but maybe that's not the only reason Conrad runs his hand down Veser's back to wake him.

And gets bitten for his trouble, but as Veser said, he should have known.

.0.

Conrad's skin is cold all the time now, a sort of inborn creeping coldness that starts at the heart that no longer beats and chills him to his very bones, a chill that doesn't bother him, except of course when it does.

Veser's skin is kind of cold too, or judging from the complaints of the living at least a bit clammy, but that's nothing in comparison to the dead.

And Conrad wants

to touch it.

And it's not as if it would be any kind of shock to Veser cause Veser's a pretty touchy-feely guy, all two-for-flinching punches and arms slung over necks and backs and shoulders, but he doesn't exactly do it with his clothes _off_ and Conrad wouldn't want him to anyway except

that

he does.

.0.

So Conrad goes _really fucking weird_ around Veser something like three months in, but he doesn't throw Veser out and he's not shy about blowing up and shouting at Veser about small annoying things then doing awesome things like getting him a humidifier because he's sorry.

Veser _loves_ the humidifier.

But when Conrad goes weirder than he already is, Conrad goes really _fucking weird_.

"It's the alive thing, isn't it," he says at last, trying to be sensible and mature and using the thing on at full blast, so that every time he thinks he might balls up being as gentle as Lee he looks at the water and thinks of his mother and thinks of Lee.

Actually he's not entirely sure why he's thinking up of Lee. He's never been one for fucking brooding.

"No!" protests Conrad loudly, trying not to look at him from the other side of the room and Veser's all like _dude I can totally see you're uncomfortable about me being alive and full of blood right here while you're on your pussy non-vampire lifestyle, and I want to say, I don't care if you want to eat me_.

And then he smiles at Conrad.

And Conrad, anguished, shrieks, "I don't want to _EAT_ you, you stupid-"

Veser raises one hand, almost-imperiously, and says, "You look at me like you want to eat me. It's okay. It's totally cool. You're way too much of a pussy to ever attack me. I trust you on that."

"I don't even want to be HAVING this conversation with you EVER," says Conrad, but his eyes are so _totally_ all over the line of Veser's throat, and Veser feels he's made great strides in their relationship when he says, "I could _give_ you blood. You know, since sexual favours are so out of the question. I could ask the doc for the stuff so you could take what you wanted."

Conrad makes a noise a little like a dying chicken.

"It's no problem," says Veser cheerily. "I mean, I'm tough. And this way I can actually give you something you need, so this is what we call win-win all the way."

.0.

"It's like sushi," said Veser, while Conrad stared at the bag of blood he was holding out too-casually, greenish-tinted and almost swishing with the sound of waves crashing in Conrad's ears. "I mean, maybe. I think. The Doc said you needed to damn well eat, and I'm seriously grateful that you-"

"You really don't need to," says Conrad faintly, even as he smells the still-open wound and the salt in the air, hears Veser's heart beat and his muscles shift under his skin, under his _skin_ and his mouth _waters_.

" _You_ don't need to," says Veser hurriedly. "If you don't want- like, sushi's an acquired taste, right?"

"I liked sushi," says Conrad, and takes it from Veser's hand before he can snatch it away or stomp off, embarrassed. "Um, could you- turn-"

"Oh, right," said Veser, with a shade of an eye-roll for the idea that the _vampire_ is squeamish about blood, his grin razor-sharp in all directions.

It isn't any more salty than one would expect, but something about the taste of it makes Conrad's mouth go dry.

.0.

And then everything just kind of gets fucking worse for Conrad, who now gets used to having a steady stream of Veser in his diet, but now he can _smell_ Veser, who rather typically thinks of feeding his blood to Conrad but not at all of putting a shirt on, or even of doing his vapour-basking in the room Conrad gave him, because it's not as though he can have guests any more.

Initial anaemia makes Veser go even more boneless, sleeping right there and then instead of even making a pretence to sleep in his room, where Conrad could at least pretend he had no right to be while he watches Veser breathe and sleep, looking deceptively defenceless, and by the time Veser learns to gauge exactly how much he can give every day he's already made it his habit to fall asleep there.

And he's just

so

close, Conrad could reach out and

touch-

"Okay," says Veser when he's fully woken up and kneeling on Conrad's spine, having nearly wrenched Conrad's arm out of it's socket. "Look, don't worry, I'll think of something else."

.0.

"-and it's like he was really fucking great to let me stay and feed me and all, but he really looks like he's _suffering_ and that's just so bloody not cool, so I was wondering if you guys would have room if we can't- augh."

Hanna and '...' exchange glances, and then Hanna thinks and thinks with his hand held up and says, "Whoa whoa whoa whoa. Hold up, it's okay, I'm brilliant, you _don't_ want to go, right?"

"No," says Veser, and means it.

"Yeah!" says Hanna. "And you've never minded giving him blood, right?"

"No," says Veser, leaning forward eagerly.

"So the solution, obviously, is just to let him drink from you!" finishes Hanna triumphantly. "If you don't mind about it that is."

Veser sits back, awed. "That's fucking brilliant," he says, and kicks Hanna under the table as a way of expressing his amazement, in the same motion that he jumps up and arrows out of the office with nary a backward glance.

'...', mouth still half-open to deliver a caution, shuts it before the flies get in.

"I love helping out my friends," says Hanna joyfully, and limps off to rub the feeing back into his feet.

.0.

If he'd ever at any point actually gotten a coffin to sleep in, thinks Conrad, he probably wouldn't wake up to situations like this.

Veser straddles him, long legs in his jeans, mouth stretched into this really giant crazy grin that Conrad knows by now doesn't bode well for anyone, not even Veser.

And he's stripping off his shirt.

"I'm dead," says Conrad with certainty. "Abner finally came back and finished the job, and now I'm in hell."

Veser frowns and says, "Has that freak been bothering you again? God, what an asshole. Someone should rip him a new one."

Conrad covers his face. "Veser, what are you doing?"

Veser brightens. "Oh! Well, I know you've been freaking out about wanting to eat me, so I went to Hanna, and-"

The sound Conrad makes now is more like that of a squashed cat.

"-and he totally gave me this _great_ idea, so. Here I am!"

Conrad hasn't reached for his glasses, so everything but Veser sprawled all over his lap is blurry, though that might just be his vision going swimmy on him.

"What."

"You can eat me," says Veser patiently. "Not all the way, though, but you can totally eat me, I don't mind-"

"I don't want to _eat you_ ," moans Conrad, and is so glad that he sleeps in full pyjamas no matter how the weather.

"Nonsense," says Veser blithely, and obligingly puts his arms around Conrad's neck, baring his throat to Conrad's mouth, and this is just so _fucking_ surreal that Conrad snarls low in his throat and flips them, holding down Veser, who is still small and wiry and nowhere near full-grown, who is actually smaller than Conrad although most times it's hard to tell.

" _There's_ that bloodlust!" says Veser far too cheerfully. "So, yeah, I think that maybe fifteen, twenty minutes of feeding depending on how fast you eat-"

"I don't want to eat you," says Conrad, deceptively calm.

Veser rolls his eyes. "Look, we've been over this, I don't care if you want to eat me."

"I don't want to _eat_ you," repeats Conrad, despairingly, and kisses Veser instead, cutting himself open on his sharp sharp teeth, pressing him down and feeling Veser open to him too easily and too trustingly-

"Oh," says Veser when Conrad pulls back and would have flung himself away, his hand holding the vampire back easily. "So you wanted sexual favours after all then."

"I don't- grhgr-"

Veser looks at Conrad bleeding Veser's blood from his mouth and remember looking at him before and thinking of Lee, and remember that he should know lovesickeness when he sees it, he's watched it long enough.

So Veser smirks, and pulls Conrad back towards him, and breathes into his mouth, "I said I didn't mind if you wanted to eat me," and then as now they both know that it's true.


End file.
